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When I started this blog entry, I was still operating on the vague notions I’ve had all along about these Intelligences that seem to be operating in our gardens, wherever we live. But when I went to look up the various spellings and designations for the beings we’re calling fairies, I ran into a lot of dogma and ancient beliefs and tales and legends. And I also decided, like so many other contemporary writers, that somehow faery or faerie looks and feels more poetically appropriate and suitable than fairy. Maybe too many modern so-called “fairytales” have tainted that spelling with something other than what I mean here.

But what is that exactly? Lianne, just what DO you mean by garden faery (or fairy)?

Also, when I sent the first draft of Part I to Laird William for his permission to speak of his work with Fairy Realms Reiki, I was suddenly self-conscious about my ignorance on this faerie subject, let alone confused about spelling. How could I be writing so fast and furious about something I actually, truly know nothing about?

I do know that what I’ve been envisioning in the garden really isn’t like any of the explanations or definitions or traditions I read about on Wikipedia. It’s close to the deva concept, but not really. That would mislead you. Sigh.

So now that you’ve read Part I, and Part II about the lessons we’ve learned from the fairies, I will embark on a CoAuthored venture to enlighten both you and me. I shall ask my Cosmic CoAuthors just what it is that Joseph and I are experiencing in the garden.And so my Cosmic CoAuthors have added:

“Every living thing—plant, animal, human—possesses a psychic anatomy,” my CoAuthors remind me. “That means an Infinite Intelligence, uniquely designed for that individual being/entity, including the plants in your garden.

“In that perspective, they do have their own identifiable Intelligence, and respond to all the interdimensional energy principles that you have been studying for lo, these many years. Frequency, harmonics, universal connectivity—these all remain true and valid whether speaking of squid or poppies.

“If you study the works of such garden visionaries as Luther Burbank or Gregor Mendel, and quite a few modern innovators in botanical sciences, you will see that there has always been a seemingly ‘miraculous’ element to the process of growing things, breeding things, tampering slightly with the order of things in the natural world.

“We could easily diverge into the realm of tamperings that have done harm, but we feel that enough has been said on that subject to keep humanity on Earth busy for quite some time trying to rectify the wrongs wrought by widespread ignorance of these matters of interdimensional harmony and connectivity.

“Instead, we will focus on your subject of garden faeries. They are a delightful invention, don’t you think? For when humans do not understand, they tend to worship or personify—whether gods, demons, nature sprites, devas, or faeries.

“All of the interdimensional workings of energy that come into play when working with the natural world that are not visible to your five senses, or categorized in your present understanding of science (limited as it is largely to the third dimension), often fall into this category of mystical, mysterious, fickle, or whimsical. But much truth underlies these literary and religious creations. Indeed, the notion of a human-like (but not quite human) intelligence behind what happens in the world around you is closer to the truth than the more mechanically-oriented thinkers (those blinded by the illusions of the dimension in which they live) would have you believe.

“It is not our intention to remove the beauty and wonder of these phenomena from your life. We merely want you to understand that even garden faeries cannot work their magic without following universal principles of energy. But there’s so much about that subject that you do not yet understand that it will indeed appear to you to be the workings of an Intelligence that must surely be embodied in these tiny creatures so delightfully rendered by artists over the ages.

“And the mischievous natures ascribed to them—well, let us say that in many cases, it has been far easier to blame a brownie than to accept self-responsibility when things go wrong or missing! How many marriages of old have been saved by the “work of the brownies,” we dare not count!

“Are you ready to know that indeed there are Intelligences—Minds long developed along evolutionary pathways—who work and specialize in the creations of nature now filling your planet’s landscapes? That these Minds of advanced development can work in harmony with your own—or rather, we should put the horse properly before the cart—that your minds can work in harmony with theirs? Have you noticed the design of a hummingbird lately? Of a honey bee? Of a squid that oscillates electrically, changing its color to suit its needs?

“Have all the wonders of the natural world on Earth been fully and completely understood and explained? No, of course not. Your science has not yet arrived at an interdimensional understanding of universal scope.

“So the concept of faery—tiny Being, winged for ease of transition and speed of activity—has served down through the ages as a catch-all for the phenomena of interdimensionally linked transpositions of energy, connected by relative frequency, traveling harmonically down through dimensions, until these vortical Intelligences arrive at some observable point on your planet’s third-dimensional floor, in your own back yard. There truly are Minds involved in every stage of this transition, including your own.

“Do they look like your artists have rendered them, these Universally-attuned Minds we describe? If they wish.

“Or do they look like glowing Flames of Light? Yes, that too, if the occasion warrants it.

“Or are they invisible? To all but the most sensitive Earth beings, usually.

“Are they tricksy troublemakers? Now that is another subject altogether.

“Universally-attuned Beings, you might be surprised to learn, come in many guises, and function by reasoning that is often far beyond your comprehension. That accounts for some of the supposed ‘tricksiness’ of the phenomena you observe. It’s not tricky at all, except to your limited perspective.

“On the other hand, there are downright malevolent forces in the universe that do not limit themselves to third-dimensional realms that, if you allow through your own frequency oscillations, can come into and influence your environments and your lives. No, this is not folk-superstition but a factor of the infinite nature of energy, which oscillates in a range of frequencies from highest to lowest.

“Without repeating a number of dissertations we’ve given on these subjects, here in your little blog post, let us just say that it pays to observe and learn, to understand as much as you can about these universal energy oscillations which are constantly taking place, not only in your garden, but in every aspect of your mind, body, and environment.

“Your garden experiments are a part of that learning, no less valuable than the experiments you’ve been making in other aspects of your lives. Pay attention. Learn from Nature. Watch the Intelligences constantly at work, and when you must make some intervention—or believe that you must—do so with the utmost care that you remain in harmony with the highest frequencies of Infinite Intelligence, so that your actions bring about constructive results.

“Check your motivations. Do you act from selfish or unselfish motives? Do you seek to create beauty? Do you respect the life around you, and the role of each tiny element in the harmonically functioning Whole? And so on.

“You can read much about the experiments of the advanced beings who incarnated on your planet to carry out this sort of research in their own work with the plant world, if you choose. Or you can put your hands in the dirt and observe.

“So please, go on with your descriptions and empirical evidence, if you will, and let us all learn from each unique experience. That is how we all grow, ourselves included. Infinity does not repeat itself identically, despite all your scientists’ attempts to make it conform to this limited, mechanical ideal.

“And never lose your sense of wonder and beauty! For what is a garden if not a place for the soul to take flight along with the Faeries, to be touched by a new Light of Infinite understanding? If we cannot reach you in the garden, where will you ever find us?

“For we reside in all things, and so, dear ones, does a part of yourselves. Remember this and be guided by it.

“Always, we remain,

Your Brothers and Sisters of FaerieLight”

* * * *

As a thank-you for taking this journey of exploration with me, this Soul Pursuit, here’s a beautiful, short film of that faerie Intelligence at work by filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg.

Information about the delightful illustration at the top of this blog would also be appreciated, so I can give the proper credit. The flower images are all from our very own Fairy Garden. Joseph thought you’d like to know that we grow something more than weeds!

Have you discovered faeries at work in your garden?
Please add a Comment below!

And if you liked this series of posts, please share, tweet, Facebook, or forward to your friends to help spread the love, respect, and understanding!
Thank you!

The photo above was cropped out of an untouched image Joseph took in our back yard. Here’s the original, which I found just this morning while selecting images for this blog post. Can you see the little Light Being in the lower right?

A trick of the light? Or … a real garden fairy caught playing in the sunbeams?

The photo was taken in our back yard in December, 2010, nine months after we moved into this rental house in the Tierrasanta area of San Diego. But we never noticed the fairy image before today! It was just another shot of sunlight and fallen leaves and rocks in our collection … until now, when I’ve come to write the follow-up to Part I of “Gardening with the Fairies.” (If you haven’t read Part I yet, follow that link. And be sure to read Part III, where my Cosmic CoAuthors weigh in on the subject; I’ve quoted them as clearly as I can.)

Okay, if that doesn’t convince you that the fairies have followed us to California, how about the story of this little one. I first spotted it, this lonely little sunflower, forcing its way up into the patio from between the loosely laid pavement and the ill-fitting boards the landlord installed, evidence of the birdseed we’d tried putting out last summer (until it attracted a rat in the fall, the most undesirable sort of fairy, a story I’ll get to in a moment.)

Right after I took this picture, I backed up from watering a hanging plant and …. oh, nooooo!!!! I crushed it! The stem was completely broken at the base, the whole plant lying on its side. That was on February 26. Then this morning, March 24, while we were eating breakfast on the patio, surprise! A month later, he pops out with his little face, as if to greet all of you! Because he knew that I planned to write this today? Does this look fairy-like to you, or is it just my imagination?

Now look way down at the bottom of this image, where this sunflower is located. The plant is growing in an L shape, completely overcoming the broken stem!

This is the kind of lesson the Fairies are always bringing home to us. I’d say today’s lesson could be called “Perseverance,” what do you think?

And on a more mundane level: NEVER NEVER NEVER use Round-Up. Anywhere. For any reason! Look at what we would have missed! And take note of what the sign above that little sunflower warns:

Thanks to my dear friend from high school, Rhonda, who saw this in a store in Atlanta, knew nothing about this blog post or our gardening habits, but just “had” to send it to me despite the fact that it’s been decades since we exchanged gifts! (We won’t say how many decades, either.)

We have neighbors on three sides and across the street in this crowded but aging subdivision. Some of them use poison in every bare nook and cranny. They kill spiders and bees and wasps and snakes out of fear. They loathe anything they consider to be a “weed,” and they will not let a fallen leaf or catkin or seed pod remain on the ground or pavement for more than an hour or so. I am not exaggerating; they’ve told me so.

They also let their hired gardeners use gas-powered blowers on the bare dirt around their bushes and on perfectly clean driveways. Noisy, smelly, obnoxious, wasteful, and unhealthy for the gardeners and the fairies and the people living in the home. Ugh. And if only they’d all do it on the same day so we could get it over with.

Okay, that’s enough criticizing the neighbors; they just don’t know better yet. But it explains why neighbors often don’t understand fairy gardening. And why we’ve done some leaf removal out front purely to please them. Some, but not all, because those leaves have served our garden well, particularly in this very warm and dry winter we’ve just had. They’ve formed a natural mulch to keep what little moisture there was in the soil. Of course, we won’t dig them in; that might steal nitrogen while they decompose. But so far, I haven’t come upon the day this year when the fairies said, “Okay, time to get rid of the leaf cover.”

Oh, no, I don’t “hear” them; only through my inner ear. Just in case you were wondering if there were little squeaky voices in my ears every time I set foot outside. Not quite; although they do have helpers and messengers, as you’ll see.

When we rented this house in February, 2010, the landlord told us he would not pay for the water, and that he knew nothing about nor did he care about the landscape as long as we returned the home in the same shape we found it. (Foolish investor, huh? Or was he smart because he knew we’d fix it at our own expense? It’s our philosophy of renting: treat it as if you will live there for a long time and you’ll benefit most of all.)

But we’re in the midst of a long-term (perhaps permanent) drought in San Diego. Water is very expensive here because it is mostly imported from the Colorado River. It costs us about $100 a month for our water and sewer bill. The water we receive is also full of chlorine and fluoride (we installed filters indoors). We normally rely on the rainy months of November through March or April to turn the arid landscape green in San Diego. But this year, almost no rain fell until St. Patrick’s Day!

Our first spring here was a very rainy one, thankfully, because it rescued plants the previous tenants had allowed to die over the summer. They’d stopped watering for six months, neighbors told us, because the husband lost his job, which is also why they left the home vacant for us. But before they moved, the man was gifted with some kind of chainsaw, a neighbor who loves trees told me. Perhaps being out of work frustrated him, because he managed to brutalize nearly every tree on this tiny lot with his new toy, cutting them back in the extreme and leaving some barely alive and one lemon tree completely dead.

Now, it’s rare to have deciduous trees here to begin with, but the original owners of this lot must have been wise garden planners. Which is probably one of the things that attracted us to it: their loving energy, deeply buried beneath the misguided ministrations of uncaring landlords and poverty-stricken tenants. It’s all about the layers of energy infusing a place, you know.

In the back yard, so nicely arranged with paved and terraced areas: a beautiful showcase Japanese Maple. Over the back fence, a humongous mulberry, as wide as it is tall. Out front, a delicately flowering silk tree, a tall liquid amber, a rare pine, and a year-round magnolia variety, with a red-bricked patio bordered by drought-tolerant junipers. All had been butchered by the angry tenant. But the good bone structure was there, and thankfully, they’re all beautiful once again. All it took was some water (thank you $$Joseph$$) and paying attention to the fairies.

Liquid amber in autumn

Japanese maple in spring… and you can guess what it looks like in autumn!

On the “dark,” almost-north-facing side of the house, our garden-loving neighbor who plants everything in pots pointed out that when it rained, the water would gush through from under her fence, over what was then vacant sandy dirt in a raised area of our yard, splashing down over the retaining wall onto the pavement below, then flooding under our gate, down the sloping driveway, and into the street out front. What an ugly waste of water!

Why so much bare dirt? Because the non-watering tenants and the thoughtless landlord conspired with misplaced trash bins and tossed debris. Elsewhere in this narrow, elevated strip, wild things grew in a tangle of tropicals and unidentifable bushes dying from the lack of water. The fence in question was literally falling over, with plenty of gaps, propped up by old bits of wood or debris. The landlord promised to replace it before we signed the lease; months later, after much reminding, he finally did so when the neighbors agreed to pay half. That required ripping out a lot of pretty vegetation clinging to it, which the fairies quickly renewed.

The story repeated in many areas of this lot, front and back: dead lemon trunk sticking up like an accusing skeleton, a broken and rusting homemade brick barbecue (unfixable, with a promised removal that took two years and nagging), more bare ground swept clean of tree droppings, and extensive areas of bland “decorative rock,” which is at least a form of water-efficient landscaping.

This is our front yard today. You can already see that, with help from the resident bunny, we’ve encouraged things to violate that rocky restriction: wild grasses near the sidewalk that attract birds; clumps of alyssum that flourish and smell heavenly in rainy years, and the beloved, drought-tolerant gazania clump in the foreground. During the hot months, anything desirable or blooming gets a little hose water. All were lovingly “pruned” and savored and fertilized by the bunny who spent long hours in our yard.

That’s because the bunny loved to eat the (yellow) gazania flowers. These are complete volunteers blown in or “fairy-lifted” from the neighbor’s yard, but we all welcomed them (bunny, Joseph, me) and cared for them and encouraged them to grow. On the right, a Spanish lavender and a rosemary bush we rescued from pots, so we did actually install these two by getting Joseph to dig through at least a foot of rock and plastic. Notice how I’ve left the leaves around them this year to conserve water. The stubs of alyssum in between would normally be in full scented bloom.

When we moved in, the patio had been scrupulously sprayed with herbicides, no doubt, because it had not a single weed between the bricks, and because the rock-filled strip on the right (invisible in photo) *still* is not healed. Plants we’ve put there (after I dug out the rocks) actually shrank, then died. I have my fingers crossed for this year. So the edges of the patio were all bare right up to the juniper hedge and the white rock. The dwarf lemon wasn’t there, nor were any of the volunteer clumps of ivy, gazania, or alyssum which thrive every time I water the lemon tree. And that baby palm tree sticking up from the junipers? Fertilized by the bunny’s long afternoons hiding beneath the hedge, it, too, is a complete volunteer that appeared after we moved in. One day, it will enhance the patio with more shade, if the neighbor doesn’t have it removed as she’s threatened.

To many eyes, this is all very messy now. To ours, it’s a beautiful arrangement of blooming fairy plantings, with minimum to no effort or cost on our part!

The plants soften the entire area, which happens to comprise two “missing” feng shui areas from the house design, relating to “knowledge and self-cultivation” and “career.” (No wonder that poor tenant lost his job! In the back yard, the “wealth and prosperity” area is also missing from this house.)

The bird bath came with us from Michigan. The gazanias open in sunlight; they were not completely open yet this morning when I took the photo above because (yay!) there’s a rainstorm on the way. And you can’t see the small branches of fairy-planted purple lantana bush that have sprouted up in several places, foreground and background, which will one day be hedges of drought-tolerant color. Or the wild strain of scarlet salvia volunteers which will soon bloom again beneath our window, another “weed” I refused to pull out until I knew what they were. Now I grant them water wherever I find them, and the fairies like to choose the locations.

I do selectively pull and cut weeds from between the bricks, the ugliest or most invasive. But the hot sun of summer will quickly take care of them. No chemicals needed! (We use only organic fertilizers, and no pesticides or herbicides or fungicides.)

The edging of plants also offers a kind of visual, “energy hedge” to block the flow of chaotic traffic-energy that was radiating up that bank of plain rock right into our kitchen window. The baby magnolia casting the shade in the picture has also regrown from the severe pruning enough to block the neighbor across the street from gazing directly through our many-windowed kitchen from his upstairs bedroom. And we consoled the naked pine tree for the chainsaw damage by wrapping its bare trunk with solar -powered star-shaped lights that glow a gentle bluish white every night.

When we moved in, the landlord offered to cut down that “spiky bushy thing” clinging to the front of the house, next to the kitchen window. With a touch of horror, we hastily assured him that no, we liked it just fine. This picture was taken on January 25 of this year.

The special thing about this “spiky bush” is that for the last two autumns, it’s been nearly stripped of leaves and blossoms by late-season caterpillars, which also devoured its cousin in the back yard. We could spray with BT as other gardeners do, but we chose to handle the invasion the fairy way. We merely waited for predators to show up and rectify this imbalance of Nature.

They came in the form of wasps, and then tiny flocks of bush-tits, adorable little birds that sweep in and clean the branches. They came back again and again, calling to one another in their characteristic way as they move from tree to bush to tree around the yard.

We also found huge spiders building nests between the eaves and the plant, the better to catch the moths that laid the eggs that hatched the caterpillars. I must admit, last fall the poor bush looked like it would never recover! But here’s what the “Raspberry Ice” bougainvillea looks like this morning:

Here are a couple more views from the kitchen window:

Rodney Rupert Rabbit, taking a nap break from his hard labors as a fairy-helper. He used to sleep in broad daylight in this poisoned strip of dirt, trying his best to heal it. We miss him, after two seasons, but he left behind some beautiful flowers. We think he met his demise from another fairy-helper who suddenly showed up last fall. Our neighbor caught this photo in her back yard:

This guy came trotting blithely down our back yard sidewalk one day when we were eating lunch under the maple. I had my back to him but as soon as he and Joseph locked eyes, he zipped back beneath the fence. Nevertheless, he used this spot in the neighbor’s yard for a bathroom for a week or so, and then all the rabbits on our street disappeared and the lizards vanished from our yard for a while.

Yes, I’m sad about it; I loved that rabbit outside my window every day, even as he devoured the flowers while keeping one eye on me, watching from the window. But I understand the cycles of nature, and the role the fox must play.

Now every property has its energy layers of history. Our house is located on what they like to call an “island in the hills.” This relatively new subdivision in San Diego was built on a series of dry hilltops surrounded by deep chaparral and riparian canyons, home to hawks, lizards, coyotes, rabbits, foxes, rattlesnakes, and so on. The hilly streets of our neighborhood are sitting on something like long fingers of foothills that extend out from the mountain ranges to the east. I believe glaciers at one time stretched down through these hills, presumably melting and flowing toward the ocean to the west, carving out the canyons.

Native Americans added their energy layer to the land, living throughout San Diego County, migrating winter and summer from high foothills and mountains in the east, to the ocean on the west, both foraging for food and “managing” (rather than planting) crops of wild, native plants. Hmm, does that sound familiar?

Maybe Joseph and I really have lived on this land before? We did once choose to rent a rough little house out in the higher and dryer foothills not far from the Mexican border, only to discover acorn-grinding areas worn into the boulders in our back yard, and a secret view of the sacred native site high above us to the east, known for its rocky face as “Madre Grande.” Some past-life clues for me to reconsider?

Back to Tierrasanta: Everyone in San Diego by now knows about the conquistadores, of course, and the priests’ enslavement of the natives to build their missions, and about its modern military history, which causes the Marine Corps jets to zoom noisily over our heads, since what used to be the Navy’s Top Gun training center is right next door to us. But this little piece of land on which we now make our home was known during World War II as Camp Elliott. During the war it was used as a practice firing range. When the building contractors began this planned community in the early 1970s, everyone was assured that the military had made a “clean sweep” of all unexploded ordnance.

But in 1983, two eight-year-olds died and a twelve-year-old companion was injured when the boys found some unexploded World War II era ordnance in the much-vaunted “planned open space” area at the end of their street. Since then, several sweeps of the canyons and open areas have been made, the most recent yielding 3,787 small arms (smaller than 50 caliber), 1,016 large arms, 26,321 pounds of ordnance-related scrap, and 142,253 pounds of trash.

So to say that the fairies here were in hiding might be an understatement. But they’ve certainly responded to the small bits of attention we’ve given them!

Joseph and I are not really consistent nor persistent gardeners. We love nature. Simple. And we find great joy in tinkering with it now and then. We also listen carefully and proceed cautiously.

One of my first tasks when we moved in was to try to put flowers in the mostly-dead area next to the back patio, where the lemon tree had expired. So I started weeding. But something told me not to pull out those weird-looking weeds just starting to come up. Not very pretty, with their large leaves. But it was just a persistent, nagging, “Don’t do it.” (Remember, the landlord is clueless about plants, trees, and all growing things. I’ve tried asking him what things were, but no luck. We were fortunate that he told us where to find a sprinkler nozzle out front; unfortunately, the system is broken. He did leave a hose, and we bought another two.)

The weeds got taller and taller, and pretty soon they had some tightly pointed, narrow things that just might be buds. But they also reminded me of noxious, poisonous weeds from my Michigan childhood. Still, I restrained myself as we planted a bare-root Rio Samba rose in the midst of them, taking the place of a dead one we dug out. And then one day in May:

I searched all my garden books and found a picture “by accident” finally: Mexican primrose, a rhizome that spreads like crazy. But when it blooms, very pretty!

Over in the tangled area of tropicals, we identified the tree-sized specimens as schlefferas because they look exactly like the houseplant version, and sure enough, that’s what they are. A little more research told us they’re poisonous, so we’re cautious about the flowering bracts. We soon had giant philodendrons coming back to life as well, something the landlord volunteered to remove. But beneath them, I was puzzled by a very homely sort of shrub. Being water conservative, I didn’t spare much for this darker area.

I’m now sad to say I lost one of those two “ugly” shrubs because of my hard, prejudiced heart; a lesson for me. Because by some fairy miracle, one of the pair of them managed to spit out a bloom or two that first year, just so I’d know what they were. Too late for its sibling! Heart breaking!

But this one we saved and lavished with the pine needles from the front yard. Everyone knows, AZALEAS love acid soils and pine needles grant just that!! And I’ve never seen one with such huge blossoms! Here’s a photo from this spring, after surviving neglect long enough to enjoy two seasons of love and fertilizer and water and pine needles and judicious rescue from the ivy and morning glory vines that were strangling it:

Everywhere Joseph and I dabbled in the yard, we listened to the fairies after that. Joseph came in one day and told me that he’d been instructed not to PULL the weeds, but to break them off if he must, because their roots were intricately intertwined with the desired plant’s roots. And because in this dry climate, weeds themselves were actually healing the bare, damaged areas of the yard, adding nutrients when they died, breaking up the hard dirt.

Below is another recovering area in our front yard, where our landlord had stored the heavy trash and recycling bins. They were the first thing you saw when you pulled into the driveway. The dirt beneath them and beneath the silk tree (trunk in picture) was bare, heavily compacted ground. We moved the trash bins behind a gate where they belonged and tried to plant seeds. But this is also where the rains would rush through in winter, leaving little behind because the ground couldn’t absorb anything. So, we did as the fairies advise: we first encouraged any weed that dared to appear. These would break up the soil and add nutrients. Then, when the strappy gazania leaves started poking up, we nurtured them, pulling or cutting any weeds crowding them. When liquid amber and silk tree leaves fell over the area, we left as many as the neighbors could tolerate. 🙂 Then the trailing African daisies appeared, perfectly balanced in white and purple varieties. And of course, the alyssum to complete the bouquet.

All the flowers you see here are volunteers, fairy-planted. I love the way they mix and balance the colors! This year, you can see the trash-can area is still recovering, but we seeded it with native wildflowers. In the middle is a purple lupine and some tiny daisy-like flowers that will be blooming soon. The silk tree (trunk) is recovering nicely from the severe pruning. Note the retaining wall at the back? It’s another damaged area (see below).

This is also part of the formerly bare area where the water rushed through, just above the retaining wall, still beneath the silk tree. The neighbors behind that row of bricks used to store their trash bins here because no one stopped them, so it’s sandy and compacted. We tried planting many things, but all that grew was the fennel you see in the foreground (planted by aforesaid neighbor). We harvested its seeds and watched the beautiful caterpillars that favor it. But everything else died and the fairies seemed to have deserted this sunny spot. ???? Then we discovered that, although we got them to hide the trash bins behind their gate as the community prefers, the neighbors’ gardeners kept raking this area bare every week! So our seedlings were destroyed; our aloes killed, etc. We finally installed the little black fencing, and after I complained about the gardeners, they responded with the red brick. Nice! A week or so ago, I found pulled weed debris thrown here, so I added the sign. And now our wildflowers are just coming up.

Joseph threw those wildflower seeds all over yard this year. Imagine if we’d had rain! These native lupines are magical in themselves: they add nitrogen to the soil. We didn’t even bury the seeds!

Look where this young blossom appeared in February, all by itself on that fragile stem! A lot of people would have plucked out the “weed” popping up on their “groomed” ground beneath the maple. (Ours is purposely covered with leaves, as you can see.) In a wetter winter, quite a few of these bloomed on a far distant side of the house. But here? Who planted it? This is where that fairy light showed up in Joseph’s photograph above, by the way. Hmmmm….
And the annual lobelia lived through the winter to bloom again this spring:

Now, I’m beginning to wonder how far I should go with this. The fairies have been designing amazing things all over this yard, while we just keep trying to cooperate. Every tiny area has a story. But maybe more pictures will save us some words. Most of the following are “weeds” that simply grew in unexpected places and we let them be. Starting with this butterfly-attracting succulent that appeared beneath my favorite rose bush, just fat, fleshy leaves. And then:

I do love this wild gazania’s color:

After the new fence, enormous geraniums started to appear, along with endless morning glories, asparagus ferns, the restored azalea, ivy everywhere. That skinny stem in the middle is a fairy-planted apple tree, currently bare, that grew during our stay here from something that must’ve fallen from the one the neighbor has in a pot on the other side of the fence. Maybe one day it will have apples? The philodendron suffered from the low water year, but it will be back. This one grew from an old stump buried under the ivy.

The orange bougainvilla was here; African daisies in the foreground volunteered, as did the orange gazania variety and the poppies. Ice plant (pink, middle right) was probably planted to secure rough, uneven bank. A neighbor unkindly called all of these “freeway flowers” because they bloom along San Diego’s thoroughfares in spring. But they are all drought-tolerant!

More “freeway flowers” on the same bank.

Wildflowers and grasses now protecting the “wash” area, soaking up water, breaking up hardpan dirt.

Volunteer freesia and nasturtiums are helping, covering a lattice we rescued from a trash pile.

By June of 2011, the sandy “wash” area was covered in the remaining wildflowers and a few other things, such as these two lobelia varieties that appeared near Joseph’s worm composting bin in the darkest, driest, least friendly area. I suppose they’re a result of all those waters running through the neighbor’s yard, picking up seeds from her own garden? But they’d never stopped to sprout before. Did the fairies give them a little push down into the sand, just so, perfectly arranged among the ever-spreading morning glories?

Those morning glories are so pretty when they bloom. But everyone knows, they love to take over. Some fairies are so exuberant, they must be restrained, or …

Yikes!

I’m not superstitious, but that happened right around Halloween season, after we’d been distracted while Joseph had pneumonia and we’d had a little rain.

Then, about three days before Halloween, we were eating outdoors and I said, “Hey, what’s that in the garden over there by the fence?”

“I don’t know,” Joseph said. So we went to investigate.

We called him Stick Man. And he stayed with us for many weeks. But there are other fairy helpers:

Camouflaged and quick!

About this snakeskin in the last picture: I was watering last September and thought I heard a rattlesnake rustling in the heavenly bamboo, exactly as I’ve heard in the wild. I moved back, well aware that there are rattlesnakes in the area. Decided I’d done enough watering and quickly (ahem) slipped back indoors.

Next day as I was eating outdoors, I looked down at the heavenly bamboo and jumped about a mile. The little fellow had used the thick branches to help himself (herself?) ease out of this skin. But no rattle! Joseph assures me from the shape of the head and lack of rattle, it was only a gopher snake or some such. Interestingly, last week we found another skin in the very same place! But this one had feet. We decided it was an alligator lizard skin.

We have a lot of those but they sneak around and avoid us usually. Although occasionally one comes to me as a kind of “animal totem” that actually belongs to my sister. Long story; ‘nother day. (Kinda creepy, they are, slithering like snakes.)

But our ordinary lizards routinely come out to investigate us. A couple weeks ago, one bold guy ran straight over to Joseph and sniffed under his moccasins! Probably smelled good because he’d been wearing them in the kitchen. Or maybe he’d stepped on a tasty bug. I caught one lizard outside the front door with a caterpillar in his mouth that was about a third of his own length!

We also have a lot of crows and beautiful hawks visiting, along with countless species of birds migrating through. We just watched a California gnatcatcher (an endangered species) hopping in and out of the lattice, looking for a nesting place, and the Western bluebirds love the bird bath. The list goes on and on, and I’m pretty sure we’ll enjoy more animal adventures here before we’re done. I grew up in the Michigan woods watching all sorts of creatures, but who knew a suburban California lot could provide so much wildlife!

Last July, we found this guy cowering against the retaining wall. Oh, what a cute lost little mouse, eh?

Then last December our Cara Cara dwarf orange produced a record amount of fruit.

We were enjoying them plucked fresh off the tree each day, a bounty to be savored over the coming weeks. Except we started finding half-eaten oranges lying under the rose bush every morning, and rat droppings on the worm compost bin. (Sorry, lost those photos in a technical snafu. But this was the same time Rhonda’s sign arrived: “Don’t Piss Off the Fairies.” We figured it was meant as a warning for the rat!)

Sometimes, you have to protect your crops. So Joseph bought traps, using peanut butter for bait as instructed. No luck. Finally, I said, “Why not give him his favorite?” So early one evening, Joseph reset the trap with an orange slice. Within an hour or so, Joseph’s keen ear recognized our local barn owl screeching nearby. We knew: there’s a rat in the trap!

He checked and sure enough, found the very dead, instantly killed fellow who’d been pilfering our oranges. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d eaten the whole thing each night, but he took one each night for five or six days, and only ate a small bit of each!

Having had a prior experience with “calling down the owls” by feeding them trapped mice, Joseph placed the much-deceased but still fresh rat body out in the open for the owl fairy-helper. We support the food chain, and that’s also why we don’t use poisons. The owl obliged, although he left a bit of gore on the pavement and some owl pellets, the usual sign of his visits.

As a reminder that gardening is sometimes a matter of exchanging our energies by eating each other, so that we must always have respect, here’s how Joseph celebrated our fairy garden yesterday:

Nasturtium and sauerkraut salad! And yes, those are real raindrops he left on the nasturtiums. It finally rained! (P.S. Some of our plants are poisonous and some are edible. Not wise to eat any of them unless you have researched it carefully!)

What the Fairies Have Taught Us So Far

Never pull a weed until you know what it is

Pick up trash and human debris, even the small stuff like bottle caps or broken toys

Understand which types of plant debris hinder or help which plants (for instance, fallen camellia blossoms harbor pests and must be removed; fallen pine needles benefit acid-loving plants such as camellias)

Don’t be too quick to judge a “pest”—the squirrel “farmed” our sunflower to multiply his dinner and our flowers; the caterpillars pruned the bougainvilla, causing more blooms; the rabbit left fertilizer in the rocky landscaping and also kept the flowers blooming

Patience, perseverance, opportunism, and cooperation. Rabbit teaches us to leap at opportunity and away from danger. Sunflowers taught us perseverance. Weeds that turned into flowers taught us patience. Bare ground is an opportunity for wildflowers, but we learned to cooperate by pouring out seeds.

Inner guidance and attunement, the most important lessons of all! Right up there with:

Enjoyment, exuberance, and expressiveness. All living things carry an Infinite Intelligence and a unique potential for expression of that Infinite for the betterment of all others. Even the rat served his purpose, keeping that amazing owl healthy and strong.

Balance. A little for you and a little for me.

* * * *

And now for Part III: At last, my Cosmic CoAuthors weigh in on the whole “fairy” subject. Don’t miss it! (I promise it’s MUCH shorter than this post! But it might include a tiny video.)

Photo credit goes to husband Joseph for many of these images. And if you’d like more recipes like Nasturtium Salad, visit his Cosmic Cooking blog!

A few years ago when we lived in Michigan, we rented a house several streets from the shores of Lake Michigan. The back yard was nothing more than weeds shaved down to stubs in an effort to mimic a lawn. The landlady even apologized for it. But we loved the house.

So when a friend of ours announced that he was gaining his Fairy Realms Reiki attunement, we immediately asked him to practice on our back yard.
I don’t think we really believed then, although the story of this form of Reiki’s origin was fascinating: all about a man in the Pacific Northwest who’d bought damaged forestland and who worked out a language with the fairies for healing it. They told him what to do and he did it. The land healed. It didn’t hurt that he already practiced human Reiki healing, so developing the fairy version came naturally to him.

And our friend, Laird William … well, let’s just say if anyone could speak Fairy or Faerie or Faery, it’s William, a Lavender Life Color through and through. We’d already dubbed him Sir William, Lord of Cats, Teller of Tales, Dweller in the Outer Realms. One day I hope you’ll read more about him, but for now, the topic is Fairy Reiki.

While we stood back in silent expectation, Laird William placed a folding chair in the midst of the stubbly brown stuff, facing away from the house toward the few things growing along a fence, runaways from an impeccably designed garden on the other side of this barricade. While Joseph and I and William’s wife repaired to the house to sample the potluck goodies, he sat out there silently for what seemed a long, long time. As I recall, he might have moved his chair once or twice to sit in a different part of the yard.

When he finally came back inside, he told us that the fairies had never left the garden, but they were, well, hidden, as if hunkered down and buried deep because of all the insults hurled upon them in this rental property.

First of all, they wanted us to remove all the bits of trash and debris hiding in the dirt and weeds. These were things that did not belong in their realm, such as rusting ancient bottle tops and bits of foil and all manner of man-made detritus, including broken dog ropes tied to a fence but hidden by weeds, and disintegrating rubber toys.

As we dutifully obeyed, we noticed the energetic feeling we got from various parts of the neglected yard. For instance, where the dog had been tied to the fence, oh, how sad! Never mind the intensely groomed, conventionally “beautified,” and strictly maintained yard directly on the other side of the fence, where no chemical was forbidden in the fight against Nature and the strenuous effort to prove the supremacy of human design. This part of our yard was a place of darkness. The dog’s despair still lingered, and who knows what other tragedies. Not far away, a Deadly Nightshade vine was literally attacking our roof, crowding out everything else.

When we were out there removing that debris, we discovered so many things we’d never taken in before. It was as if the landscape itself told the stories of woe from former tenants, with a few bits of happiness long forgotten.

The landlady’s mother had died in this house, after a long period of confinement to a wheelchair, but we never felt her presence in any lingering way (as we certainly did in other houses). But here in the back yard, the human damage was evident and much of it probably from the tenants who came after her.

Not long after we began picking up the bits and pieces of this evidence, the runaway spearmint took off along that shady fence where the dog had been confined, and soon the first of many “islands” to come appeared in the shade of a huge, spreading tree: a large oval of the biggest wood violets we’ve ever seen!

Their leaves were almost as big as my palm, and when they flowered – so beautiful! We placed a birdbath we found for $14 beneath that tree and the birds returned, providing a delightful view from our bedroom (even breaking ice in the winter to bathe).

More violets appeared, paired with what most consider an invasive weed, called “horehound,” I believe. But they matched so well, we left them.

Soon we had graceful islands of sedges beginning to form in the low spots—tall, flowing grasses cropping up here and there around the rest of the scarred yard, topped by their characteristic blooms.

Back at the far fence, where the prior tenants’ dog had been tied, you can see we were rewarded for leaving a certain kind of “weed” at the fairies’ behest: lavender daisies suddenly bloomed from it! (This was an important lesson we’ve carried with us ever since, as you’ll see in Part III of this story.)

And surprisingly, this huge volunteer appeared right in the middle of the yard! You can see the “healed” dog corner filled with mint and daisies by then (the green distance is a neighbor’s yard). Laird William had performed his Fairy Reiki only about three months earlier.

Then came winter. And we went out to play with the winter fairies! We had wonderful silly fun flinging the snow up in the air from the driveway (while our neighbors disturbed the peace brutally with their blowers). We sculpted pyramids and sphinxes at the end of the driveway, just to keep them guessing about the crazy renters from California.

But when spring came, the flowering plum out front burst into bloom again.

By the second summer, White Queen Ann’s lace appeared to accent the sedges and the pink ecchinacea we bought at a native plant sale. The wild native sumac trees that had sprouted up at the fence the first summer were readying themselves to put on a gorgeous, fiery display in the fall.

Before long, our back yard of shaved weeds was once again a lovely meadow, gracefully designed with dips and rises, “ponds” and “islands” of varying textures, colors, and miniature ecosystems, placed in perfectly pleasing arrangements. We couldn’t have designed it better.

Did I need to mention that our fortunes were small during our four-and-a-half-year Michigan sojourn? We moved three times during those years, before we headed back to San Diego. So that gave us incentive to make the best of what we had in each location, without a lot of investment. As renters, you learn to appreciate, innovate, and accommodate. We were perfect candidates for learning to let the fairies direct our gardening efforts (except when things got too far out of control, of course).

We didn’t know it for quite some time, but the tall sedge islands were providing a daytime hiding place for one of our fairy realm visitors who’d decided to stay. Then one day, in an area where the greenest grasses grew thick and free, sure enough we started to see baby rabbits!

Apparently Momma, whom we finally spotted spending her days hiding in and out of the tall sedge islands, had dug a hidden burrow there and stashed her young safely out of sight. Safe, until the day we had to come out and chase a crow away from a youngster! Thankfully, the little bundle of fur ran off and hid in the lilies of the valley that had come back to life under our kitchen windows. I’m sorry we never caught a photograph of Momma or her babies! (As you may know, I LOVE wild rabbits in my yard.)

But we also started to see a toad-fairy every time we set foot in the yard. (Can you spot him, hidden in the middle of this grassy clump? He’s very near the rabbit-babies’ hiding place.)

Were there a lot of toads, accounting for the fact that we always saw him?

Or did this one particular toad lie in wait for us, always underfoot?

And beneath the bird feeder we installed, sunflowers grew and bloomed for us—but only because we obeyed fairy orders not to pull out those unsightly shoots that grew up where the seeds fell.

As you can see if you look closely, one golden fairy finch and his wife made the best of them.

We would’ve missed the joy of watching the finches if we’d pulled those “weeds”!

Meanwhile, the tall sunflower variety we planted along the fence from seed also did surprisingly well, one single blossom near some gladiola bulbs we stuck in the dirt as the toad hopped around us.

But one day our prize sunflower, so carefully nurtured all summer, succumbed to a ravenous attack by a squirrel! He completely dismantled it in nothing flat! We were heartbroken.

And then the plant responded by sprouting side branches and our flowers multiplied! We would never have had the nerve to do what the squirrel-fairy did for us.

We started a compost pile, and it grew the most magnificently evil-looking toadstools, which Joseph marveled over as much as anything that grew in his yard. The work of evil fairies? Hmmm … we paid attention.

Out in the front yard, one tree was nearly dead when we moved in; we had no idea what kind it was. But I followed an inner (fairy) prompting to seek beneath the dirt. There I found a hideous contraption torturing the poor tree, some kind of thick plastic barrier, buried out of sight beneath the dirt! Maybe something to keep weeds away when it was a youngster? But now the tight band was killing it! I dug it out and soon after we awoke to find a fairy ring circling the tree. Soon it was thriving and growing again, and the following spring it bloomed: a flowering dogwood!

Near the dogwood, we found a sapling growing out of a poorly-chopped-down apple tree stump, which we also lovingly and defiantly resuscitated.

We learned later from the landlord that his wife’s mother had insisted that he remove an entire orchard of fruit trees from the front yard years before, simply because she didn’t like the look of them. !!!! I suppose that told us something about her gardening philosophy, and her relationship with all things fairy. Thankfully, she left the ornamental plum which supplied that perfect perch from which to commune with the fairies.

A few azaleas had survived beneath the front picture window, and everywhere Johnny Jump-Ups were volunteering their little yellow and purple faces.

To cap it all, Laird William and Lady Michelle graciously donated a non-gasoline-burning, hand-powered, old-fashioned rotary push mower to our cause and we were in Michiganheaven. (All this and free exercise too?!)

We did have some of the largest fairy helpers visiting our front yard nearly every night, though, and in summer they kept my rose-growing attempts and our volunteer tulips, shall we say, pruned. The local herd of deer loved to wait until the blossoms were just opening before enjoying their succulence. They also developed quite a fondness for the moss roses I kept trying to plant along the driveway, leaving their hoof prints behind as a kind of “thank you for the snack” rune marking. And the chipmunk fairy built a nest inside our car engine that caused us some trouble during our move back to San Diego—but that’s another story.
The only thing that failed spectacularly was our attempt at a human-designed, boxed-in, Square Foot Garden in the middle of the back yard. What an eyesore it became! And it failed because the store-bought, bagged compost from the discount garden store was improperly aged and burned up everything we planted.

The fairies must have been very tolerant of our food-growing attempts, knowing that sooner or later we’d realize that they were indeed the Master Designers and we should learn to work with them instead of relying on books. Not that we should give them free reign; even in the Fairy Kingdom there are some fairies that humans should not trust nor try to co-exist with; but that we should listen carefully, pay attention, and follow their instructions on which things to remove, and which to retain.

They taught us that, even if at first it appeared to be a weed, we must take their advice and let it be, and the results would be far more than if we used our own conscious limitations to guide us in our planting and growing. After all, I’ve heard it said that a weed is nothing more than a plant in an inconvenient location.

Of course, a fairy garden will not look like that neighbor’s yard over the back fence looked—something out of a gardening manual. It ebbs and flows and resembles a forest meadow. Leaves fall and some must remain. Edges are not trimmed by sharp blades. Snakes and spiders and bees and especially wasps must play their roles. Even crows hunting rabbit babies must be tolerated, although that’s the kind of fairy that should be discouraged from eating your friends. And neighbors who do not see fairies as you do must be reassured now and then.

Did this transformation take years and years? Not at all! The fairies’ response to Laird Williams’ contact had been immediate. With only summer as a growing season, they did remarkable things in just two of those seasons before we moved back to San Diego. But we’d learned about fairy gardening.

Still, we thought San Diego’s high desert chaparral could not be so easily coaxed. How wrong we were!

NEXT: Our traveling fairy garden, Part II, the California fairies continue our education. And Part III, wherein my Cosmic CoAuthors have a few things to say about faeries.

P.S. After a little bit more reading on the subject, I feel I must explain that my concept of faeriesis closer to the Theosophical devasthan the Celtic troublemakers so common in stories, and similar to the Findhorn devas, although not attached to the dogma from any of these traditions. More on this next time!

Please feel free to share your own fairy-gardening exploits in the Comments section!